Asparagus

Here’s a fitting sauce for springtime, full of seasonal treasures: asparagus, sweet peas, scallions, leeks, and fresh mint. And the color? Springtime green! Of course, since all of the ingredients are available year round, you can enjoy this anytime. But it is truly splendid when made with produce in season. Fresh asparagus-locally grown if you can get it-is the foundation of this sauce, both its sweet flavor and the pleasing texture of the finely sliced vegetable. Use skinny asparagus spears for uniform appearance and easy slicing (and don’t throw away the stubs; see recipe that follows). If available, fresh sweet peas are wonderful in the sauce. If not, frozen peas are always acceptable.

Asparagus frittata and pasta . . . If you think you have seen a recipe of mine that sounds like this one, you are right. In an earlier book I gave a recipe for an “Asparagus Frittata with Capellini.” And here’s “Spaghetti with Asparagus Frittata.” But they are not at all the same, even though the ingredients are nearly identical. In the earlier recipe, a bit of leftover cooked pasta is stirred into a frittata as it cooks and bakes into a tender cake, which is then served in wedges. Here you have a quick skillet pasta. In fact, it is a “two-skillet” pasta. In the big skillet you make a very simple sauce with oil, scallions, and pasta water. In another skillet, you scramble up a soft frittata with sautéed asparagus. You also cook a pot of spaghetti. When everything is tossed together—in the big skillet—the textures, tastes, and colors blend beautifully. Follow the recipe instructions for coordinating the cooking the first time you make this. Once you see and sense how everything goes together, you’ll have added a truly wonderful dish to your repertoire of family recipes. This is a good dish to make with fresh homemade egg pastas, such as fettuccine, garganelli, pappardelle, capellini, spaghettini. Instead of asparagus, you could use another vegetable in your frittata, such as zucchini, broccoli, or just onions; or ham, prosciutto, or bacon. Or have a plain frittata.

This is a great spring salad with two long, lovely green vegetables that have a real affinity for each other (try the Asparagus, Green Pea, and Scallion Sauce for pasta in chapter 3). It is delicious as an antipasto or a first course, or as a side dish to grilled meat and fish. You can serve this salad chilled, but I like it at room temperature. If you haven’t poached scallions before, be sure to note how nicely it brings out the flavors in a mellow way. And here’s a thrifty cooking tip: scallion trimmings are some of the most useful scraps in the kitchen. A handful of leaves and the root ends can make an instant broth, as a substitute for stock—see my recipe for Simple Vegetable Broth, page 288.

This simple soup can be made anytime, but it is best with locally grown asparagus (if you can possibly get it) with the sweetness of springtime. It’s also important to cook this soup sufficiently to develop the full flavor and silkiness from the base of leek and potatoes.

Any time you add olive oil, salt, and pepper to asparagus, you’re off to a delicious start. This dish calls for both whole eggs and egg whites, which cuts down on the calories but not on the flavor. Feta is also a low-fat, low-calorie cheese. So no excuses—a slice of this light vegetable delight will be irresistible to any mother.

This is what we mean about keeping it light and sexy: we all know asparagus is good for us, but it’s also known to be an aphrodisiac. So we’re not only enjoying our holiday but we’re also paving the road to romance. The smokiness of the roasted tomatoes, the tender crispness of the asparagus, and the bitter and sweet flavors of arugula—all of that says L-O-V-E to us.

This is my idea of bacon and eggs. Thick, homemade bacon adding a smoky, salty touch to gorgeous spring asparagus and tender new-crop potatoes, all crowned with a perfectly poached egg—it doesn’t get much better than this. When you break into the soft yolk, it melts into the vegetables, forming a luxurious sauce. This recipe makes four hearty portions. If you would like to serve six smaller plates, keep the other quantities the same and simply increase the number of eggs.

Red-eye gravy—which for most Southerners is the only acceptable sauce for country ham—is a savory and slightly bitter mixture of black coffee and the pan drippings left behind from frying country ham. I’m not sure how the coffee first made its way into the pan, but I like to imagine it was one of those happy accidents born of necessity. It rings true, anyway, because Southerners love gravy so much that they will find a way to eke some out of a greasy pan no matter what. I lighten my version of this quintessentially Southern dish with a bright shock of fresh, green asparagus, which plays perfectly off the saltiness of the red-eye gravy and the richness of the runny egg yolks.

Flan is essentially custard—the creamy melding of milk and eggs in what has proved to be a delectable revelation: you can make a savory flan out of virtually any vegetable. We do several savory flans at my restaurants, including mushroom and carrot, but its delicate flavor and pale green color makes asparagus flan my hands-down favorite. A potato salad made with smoked salmon (which is great on its own for lunch or brunch) is a stylish partner, but you can easily serve this flan with toasted slices of French bread and Grana Padano (or your favorite cheese) and a simple green salad with tomatoes.

Serve this grilled dinner family-style on a big platter, and let everyone help themselves. You can marinate the chicken up to 30 minutes, if desired.

Adding a bit of the pasta cooking water thins the goat cheese-and mustard-based sauce and helps it adhere to the fettuccine.

Although it takes just minutes to put together, this savory tart makes an impressive main course. A simple green salad completes the meal. The tart is also a lovely addition to a buffet or a potluck.

Add a slice of toast topped with melted cheese, and you have a light dinner or lunch. This recipe makes enough soup for eight people, but you can easily freeze the leftovers if serving fewer (directions for freezing are below).

It can be expensive to buy sushi, but it’s pretty cheap to make at home. And it’s nice because then you can use whatever vegetables you like, rather than settling for the standard vegetables that are in most rolls. You can use what we’ve listed here, or pick something completely different. It’s up to you. Nori (seaweed sheets), rice vinegar, sushi rice, and wasabi paste are the special ingredients to seek out for this dish. They may all be available in your supermarket or natural foods store, or (definitely) in an Asian food store. Bamboo sushi mats are cheap and handy to have if you are going to make maki sushi regularly; they can be found in most kitchenware stores these days.

This recipe is one of my personal favorites. Using milk instead of cream and cutting down on the Parmesan cheese makes a waistline-friendly alternative to alfredo sauce. I love lemon in just about anything, and together with the asparagus it makes for a light and refreshing pasta dish. The best part is how easy it is. You can do all of the other preparation in the time it takes to cook the pasta.

Quin-what?! Okay, so maybe you haven’t ever heard of quinoa (pronounced “KEEN-wa”), but this “wonder grain” (actually a seed) is deliciously nutty and chewy and exceptionally nutritious. This salad makes a great meal, and you can take any leftovers for lunch. What I like the best is that it’s a nice alternative to the standard pasta salad.

Loaded with asparagus and crab, this soup is elegant looking and delicately flavored. Vietnamese consider it special-occasion fare because it features asparagus, a pricey ingredient introduced by the French as an imported canned good. In Vietnamese, asparagus is mang tay, literally “French bamboo,” an apt name as both asparagus and bamboo shoots grow quickly. Resourceful Viet cooks often maximize the asparagus flavor by adding the spears and their canning liquid to the soup. But the taste is nonetheless rather flat, and canned asparagus is mushy. To achieve a strong asparagus flavor, I use fresh asparagus to prepare the soup. Asparagus declines in sweetness as soon as it is harvested, so choose only the freshest. Spring is asparagus season, and at farmers’ markets the spears are sold within twenty-four hours of being cut. To keep them fresh, stand them in a tall container filled with about an inch of water. (If the ends look dry, trim them first.) Refrigerate the container; there is no need to cover it with plastic.

Asparagus is often thought as a vegetable that requires delicate seasoning, but this hearty stir-fry proves that notion wrong. The sweet, heady sauce is essentially the same sauce called for in Water Spinach Stir-Fried with Garlic (page 179), but the addition of meaty shiitake mushrooms produces a more robust dish. Prepare this easy stir-fry during springtime when asparagus is at the height of its season, or substitute 1 1/4 pounds green beans or long beans other times of the year. Be sure to use high-quality dried mushrooms, and don’t skimp on the soaking time, or they won’t develop their naturally full flavor or velvety texture.

Brine-packed green peppercorns have a sharp, fresh, and somewhat fruity flavor that is less pungent than you might imagine coming from a peppercorn. Roasting asparagus to crisp-tender deepens its “green” flavor, and the dark blisters it acquires in the oven are especially tasty. Asparagus has a distinctive flavor, and this vinaigrette walks a delicate line, standing up to that flavor without overwhelming it. This simple side is a favorite of diners at Bar Americain.